A defibrillator is not a frequently used medical device, which performs the functions of defibrillation, pace making, supervision, etc. In addition to ordinary supervision functions, it can further perform defibrillation and pace making for curing serious diseases, such as ventricular fibrillation, atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, etc.; therefore, it is also a first aid instrument and thus the reliability requirements thereon are much higher than those on other ordinary medical devices. Therefore, in addition to improving the reliability of the design of the instrument, an automatic self-test mechanism is further expected. A block diagram of an existing defibrillator is shown in FIG. 1.
There are mainly two automatic self-test methods of the existing defibrillator.
One is to perform an automatic self-test at powering-on of the instrument, but no automatic self-test at power-off. It is possible for the defibrillator to be in the powering-off state most of the time because it is a scarcely used instrument, and problems cannot be discovered in time because the automatic self-test cannot be performed in the power-off state. The first aid time may be delayed if any problem is discovered at the time of using the instrument, even causing the instrument to be unusable and bringing about danger to the lives of patients. Furthermore, performing an automatic self-test in the powering-on procedure of the instrument may delay the time of powering on, thereby the first aid time of the patients may also be delayed, and the success rate of first aid may be influenced accordingly.
Another is to perform partial automatic self-test at turning-on of the instrument and to perform periodical automatic self-testing during the power-off of the instrument. The method of performing periodical automatic self-testing at power-off is not sufficiently flexible. For example, any automatic self-test will consume a certain electrical capacity of the battery, and thus unnecessary automatic self-testing may consume excessive electricity, which is very important for those first aid instruments, such as the defibrillator. Furthermore, the time of using the defibrillator by the users may be in conflict with the set time of the periodical automatic self-test, thus making the automatic self-test impossible to be realized and problems impossible to be discovered. If it is necessary for the defibrillator to be used for a long time from 10 PM to 6 PM of the next day, but the automatic self-test time is set at 3 AM, it may make the automatic self test impossible to be performed.